I don't understand how countries that actually had concentration camps can be for more concentration camps. Which is what Gaza is now and the West Bank is turning into. Plus all the torture facilities like Sde Teiman and other military detention camps where over 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are being held in inhumane conditions.

Italy, Germany, UK are definitely in Israel's pocket, or rather key figures in Politics.

I think they feel a historic responsibility to not oppose Israel. I agree that a lot of what Isreal does is inacceptable, but the politic reality is that politicians fear to be seen as antisemitic, especially if they have a history of facism and antisemitism. As these are often were linked in the past. Doesn't mean they are in Isreals pocket, only that it would hurt them politically in the next elections.

Yeah as a German I can say for sure that Israel is a very special topic in Germany. There's nothing more complicated than this country to talk about here. It starts in school teaching us again and again about what Nazi Germany did, comedians can't joke about anything with Israel or Judaism as topic without risking their whole career and politicians who will never vote against Israel whatever it is about because they will be called Nazi or something like anti-Semite.

And I think it's awesome that this is a big topic in school so that this shit never happens again but I also think it's bad how we can't openly talk about when Israel should be told not to do some things.

Hmm, Germany going to bat for Israel at the ICJ, UK blocking ICC arrest warrants, that's more than not willing to be seen as antisemitic. Plus voting for the end of occupation is not antisemitic.

Maybe they aren't in Israel's pocket, yet they have been convinced by Israel that not unconditionally defending Israel is antisemitic? Have they learned nothing from history.

Anyway antisemitism has lost most of its meaning since Netanyahu and the US have been slinging it at everyone who criticizes Israel's politics of mass murder and apartheid.

Fact is, this shit is happening again.

All the efforts to make sure it never happens again ironically are (and have been) making it possible to happen again. It's now eroding international laws, humanitarian law, the purpose of the UN, the Geneva conventions. All the things that were established after WW2 to make sure it never happens again are being broken down one by one while genocide is live streamed all over the world.

Lest we forget. People forgot what the sacrifices of WW2 were for. They were not for creating the next monster.

Is Israel the next monster? Not in my opinion. That title belongs to China, who will acknowledge it once they invade Taiwan.

As far as today's monsters go, here's my list: Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah.......None of them have a leader elected in a free election.

I believe in democracy.

Israel and the US are the biggest monsters bar none. ISIS and Alqaeda were comically evil and the worst but good thing they were relatively powerless outside the Middle East and grew irrelevant over the years. To say nothing of how Israel openly supported ISIS against Syria and Hezbollah, or how ISIS avoided Israel and apologized for the one little accident they had with them.

China with all its flaws is a net positive that gives the developing world an alternative to the bully that is the US government. The US will soon have to think twice before coercing others or threatening with sanctions that devastate the people, and will at one point be forced to rely more on diplomatics than propaganda, death, and destruction.

Hamas was on the right track before the Abraham Accords.

https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2021/04/hamas-internal-elections-pave-the-way-for-legislative-elections?lang=en

Whether the US elections are any better is debatable. The US is more a plutocracy nowadays than a democracy.


Iran is (still) part democracy as well

The president of Iran is usually elected every four years by a "direct vote of the people", as set out by Article 114 of the Iranian Constitution.^[13] The upcoming presidential election was scheduled to take place on or before 18 June 2025, but was held earlier due to the death of the president. Under Iran's political system, the President is the country's highest directly elected official, the chief of the executive branch, and the second most important position after that of the Supreme Leader.^[14] The minimum voting age is 18.

However the president is secondary to the 'supreme leader' who has control over the armed forces. Thus Iran is mostly a theocracy since the US overthrew the democratic elected PM in 1953 https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days


Hezbollah is a resistance group established by Lebanese clerics primarily to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. They're not nice people, but do represent over 200 thousand Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. And they have been trying to avoid killing civilians, generally targeting military outposts. The statistics don't lie.

Their aim seems to be to keep pressure on Israel in the North, displacing 80,000 Israelis until a Gaza ceasefire. It doesn't seem Hezbollah is looking to start an all out war. In fact, they have been showing restraint after their red lines have been crossed many times. Same as Iran.


Anyway I look at actions rather than words. There is one constant factor in the ongoing turmoil in the ME, the USA.

No one is 'playing nice' in the ME, the USA is making sure of that.

Components for pagers used in Lebanon blasts not from Taiwan, minister says

Components used in thousands of pagers that detonated in Lebanon on Tuesday were not made in Taiwan, Taiwan’s Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei has said.

Taiwan-based Gold Apollo said this week it did not manufacture the devices, which targeted the Hezbollah group, and that Budapest-based company BAC, to which the pagers were traced, had a licence to use its brand.

It is not clear how or when the pagers were weaponised so they could be remotely detonated. The same applies to the hundreds of hand-held radios used by Hezbollah that exploded on Wednesday in a second wave of attacks. The two incidents killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000 in Lebanon.

According to BAC there is no manufacturing there. Where were these things made.

Japanese firm says highly unlikely exploding devices were its products

Icom, the Japanese maker of the brand of walkie-talkies linked to explosions targeting Lebanese group Hezbollah, says it could not have made the devices.

“In light of multiple pieces of information that have been revealed so far, chances are extremely low that the wireless devices that exploded were our products,” Icom said in a Friday statement.

Pictures of the Hezbollah walkie-talkies that exploded on Wednesday, killing 20 people and injuring hundreds of others in an attack blamed on Israel, showed labels reading “ICOM” and “made in Japan”.

In the wake of the explosions, Yoshiki Enomoto, a director at Icom, told reporters outside the company’s headquarters in Osaka that “there’s no way a bomb could have been integrated into one of our devices during manufacturing”.

“The process is highly automated and fast-paced, so there’s no time for such things,” he said.

Lebanon Pager Blasts Are A Violation of International Law: UN



“International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects,” the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the Security Council during an emergency session on Lebanon requested by Algeria.